


Closure

by jaythewriter



Series: Misplaced Attachments [6]
Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: M/M, Multi, Part of Misplaced Attachments, Takes place after MA, wow way to feed off of all the recent Brian-Hoodie feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 14:06:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1513244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaythewriter/pseuds/jaythewriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jay sees that Tim is still hanging onto the person he's lost. </p><p>He's going to help him through as best as he can, doing whatever he can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closure

**Author's Note:**

> Brian is already explicitly dead, as shown in the earlier parts of Misplaced Attachments. I felt I should slap a 'Major Character Death' sticker on this anyway just in case.  
> Trigger warnings include: Loss of a loved one, blood, anxiety attacks on Jay's part, mentions of guns, scars, fleeting mention of alcohol. If I've missed any, like I feel like I did, please tell me.

You don’t think much of it when you catch Tim watching the old videos in the middle of the night.

Ever since the three of you escaped the ‘incident’ (the years-long journey spent on the road running from something that shouldn’t exist while fighting to hang onto your identities, yes, an incident), the entries have been set to private on YouTube. Mostly for the sake of making sure employers don’t find them-- or worse, Alex’s mother. She may act as though she’s technologically impaired, but Alex yelled until he was hoarse when he found that the video of his likeness murdering an innocent stranger was still public. 

Neither of you remember the password to your account now, which means Tim has to fight with the hints and changing and emails and all of that fuss. 

Which, to you, means that this isn’t an accident. 

You see the flickering of your laptop light upon Alex’s bedroom ceiling. If you listen over the sound of Alex’s relaxed breathing as he slumbers away against your neck, you can pick up on the tinny hum of Tim’s busted headphones. 

It takes a moment of focusing your foggy vision, but when you roll over as quietly as you can and squint at the screen, you know that he’s watching the one with Brian and Alex. 

(With himself, tucked away in a corner, coughing and hacking away, seemingly unaware of his best friend standing mere feet away, terror cracking his voice and shaking the camera.)

Again, you don’t think much of it.

But you do mention it the next morning-- just not to Tim.

“I used to go looking at the old videos when I was the only one,” you confess to Alex over coffee his mother brewed for Tim but secretly gave to you two once he left for his job interview. “It’s really... not a good sign of anything if my experience is anything to go by.”

“I dunno, he seems fine to me,” Alex brushes off, ever nonchalant. You nod into your mug, nearly burning your tongue when you sip too fast.

“Exactly!” you sputter through the pain. “He’s-- I’ve never seen him better. I mean, I’m not the leading expert on what Tim is like when he’s... as close to normal as he can get. But he’s better off than either of us.”

“He’s more employed than we are, anyway,” Alex points out with a bitter exhale. He reaches out and runs a hand through your hair, ruffling it and worsening your already awful bedhead. “Listen. You mean well but you’re not gonna accomplish anything talking to me about this. Hang onto that worry for a bit longer and wait til Tim’s settled in after the interview. You can talk to him.”

You sigh because it’s true, Alex is useless when it comes to all matters Tim-related. They might have made peace with each other, but that doesn’t mean they’re exactly up for being buddy-buddy all the time. 

And maybe you’re more worried than you’d like to admit.

“What’s got you down in the dumps? More than usual, anyway.”

Make that a definitely; you’re definitely worried. Christina picks up on it the moment you leave Alex’s bedroom and drop into your seat at the dining table-- yes, your seat, you have a place here now and /how weird is that?/

“Dunno what you mean,” you reply. The kneejerk instinct to play it cool kicks in immediately. Unfortunately, Christina has Alex as a son, which means she is used to the pulling-teeth method of getting people to open up.

“You worried about your boyfriend?”

You force yourself to maintain a straight face, looking anywhere but at the sink, where she stands happily watering the new pot of flowers she brought in from outside. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Hmm. You don’t have to keep a guard dog’s eye on the front door, y’know. I’ll tell ya when he gets home.”

Oh yeah. Christina Kralie, much like other human beings, possesses eyes. And observational skills. 

You can never be as slick as you want to be when she’s around.

“Okay, fine,” you concede, putting down the act and sitting up straight in your chair. “You got me. He’s been, uh, I wouldn’t say down. But he’s thinking about...”

Maybe someday it would be easier for you to lie to Christina after all the good she has done for you. Hell, perhaps you’ll actually be able to stretch the truth without it showing on your face someday. 

“About people we used to hang out with, and I don’t know if that’s good for him.”

(Alright, that’s not entirely /wrong/.)

Christina hums to herself and rests the potted tulips upon the counter, wiping up the excess drippings of water with her sleeve. 

“And he’s not talked to you about this?”

“Well, he’s actually... talking to these people online when he thinks we’re asleep,” you improvise, clenching your hands in your lap as your voice threatens to crack. “So it’s obviously something he doesn’t want us knowing about.”

That strikes the single serious bone Christina has in her body; her mouth goes thin and her damp arms cross her chest. 

“Interesting. As much as he likes you, I wouldn’t expect him to keep secrets from ya.”

“You’d be surprised,” you mutter under your breath. She crosses the kitchen to stand at your side, patting your head with a gentle hand. You feel briefly child-like, leaning into her touch and shutting your tired eyes.

“Timmy’s a good boy, and so are you,” she reassures you, callused fingers stroking your cheek. “It’s okay if you two have your moments of doubt or slip up sometimes. You’ll pick each other back up if you slip farther than you can handle.”

(You’re not there for a moment, you’re wandering out of a motel room, brain pulsing with energy that urges you to run, run, run, you’re not safe without your camera, you’re nothing without it, but-- he’s there, and he’s guiding you, taking your arm with a warm hand.)

(He takes you to bed later that night. He picks you up, folds you into the thin and unfamiliar sheets, and you’re safe.)

“Yeah. I... everything’ll be okay.”

“That’s right,” Christina says with such certainty, you think you might believe it. The hand on his head goes to your shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “You’ll talk to him and you’ll get an answer out of him and--”

The creaking of the front door sets you jumping from the chair, nearly slipping to the smooth floor with your sock feet. Christina snorts, though she immediately covers her mouth with a hand and a politely apologetic smile. 

“I’m home,” Tim calls out from the hall. You catch yourself analyzing the way he speaks, trying to judge whether or not he got the job, but of course you have no idea. It doesn’t prove any easier even when you see his face. His gaze keeps to the tile floor, and his arms hang limply at his sides, but that doesn’t mean anything when you’re used to seeing him skulk around like that after a sleepless night.

“Why Tim, I’ll be damned if they didn’t at least let ya wash dishes or somethin’, you look so handsome,” Christina coos, bustling over to him and running her hands through his floppy and freshly washed hair. The man flinches away, caught off-guard, though you notice he’s giving her a pass on this one unexpected touch. You smile to yourself at that and swiftly look away when he turns his stare upon you. 

“Jay, remind her that pet shelters do not require dish-washing services,” he says around a small grin before undoing the tie around his neck.

“Pet shelters do not require dish-washing services,” you repeat obligingly. 

“Hush, you two, ya can’t blame me for gettin’ confused when he’s applied to so many places!” Christina harrumphs before tucking back Tim’s bangs. They instantly fall out from behind his ear. “But seriously, hun, you look great, considerin’ that’s my ex-husband’s outfit.”

 

(And she’s right, she’s painfully, absolutely right. He doesn’t wear nice clothes often, instead slapping on whatever fits and isn’t covered in old blood from the congregated pile of outfits the three of them have made.)

(A button-up white shirt tucked into dark pants and a blue tie-- it’s so simple but it’s amazing how much of a difference it makes.)

“So aren’t you gonna ask if I got the job, Jay?”

For the second time that day, you jump, skin lighting up red. Tim managed to escape Christina’s fussing and stands at your side with a knowing smile. You try to look at him without actually looking at him.

“Yeah, uh, did you get the job?”

Tim’s smile could’ve lit up the room. Probably the entire house if given the chance.

“Hell yeah, I got the job,” he announces proudly with a squeeze to your elbow. You return his (dizzying, lovely, almost foreign) smile as best as you can, genuinely happy for him but he’s just /fucking overwhelming/.

“Those cats and dogs will be lucky to have you bathing them.”

“You bet,” he chuckles, wandering from your side and heading for the living room. You stare after him, unable to shake yourself of the heady fog that’s settled into your skull. 

Christina, naturally, is the one to break you of the spell with a knowing cough. She gazes at you with a wide grin, stretching ear to ear. The color upon your face deepens and you glower her down.

“Shut up.”

“I’m not doin’ anything,” she claims with a childishly innocent voice, shrugging you off. Her smile fades quickly as she nods to the living room. “So, about picking him back up...?”

“He-- he just got back from the interview.”

She stares.

Your insides rattle and you huff, deliberately looking away from her.

“Fine. But if he gets grumpy at me it’s your fault.”

Giving you a sweet wink, she click-clacks across the kitchen floor and returns to her plants, humming happily. 

It takes a world of effort not to stick your tongue out at her back. 

Instead, you force the deepest of preparing breaths into your chest and let it out in a long huff. You like to think that you’re getting better at talking, even if it’s about the past-- but the truth is, you know it’s so much easier keeping it squashed down and hidden away in the places nobody else would think to search. All three of you know it.

God, it’s unfair, how hard it is to break habits that destroy you from the inside out.

Your feet sound far too loud as you push yourself into the living room. Tim reclines upon the couch, hands behind his head and feet propped up on a couch arm. His eyes are shut, any ounce of tension that might have been in his face earlier completely faded now. He couldn’t look more peaceful if he tried.

All the more reason to leave him the fuck alone.

You begin to back out of the room, trying to go through the doorway into the front hallway instead of the kitchen-- if Christina sees you, she’ll never let you hear the end of it. 

“I don’t know why you think you’ll ever be good at sneaking around. You’re still about as subtle as the world’s clumsiest toddler.”

Of course you don’t get very far.

Whirling around to face Tim, you see that he isn’t budging a single inch; he watches you with a single open eye, as though it’s too much effort to use both. You stuff your hands into your pockets, having to reach fairly far since you’re pretty sure you grabbed Alex’s pants out of the congregated clothing pile.

(No wonder Christina knows about the three of you.)

“If it’s bad news, I don’t want to talk about it yet,” Tim says, arching his back, his body pulling into a luxurious stretch. “I was on my feet all day and I cannot handle it right now.”

“Well,” you sputter. Is this bad, exactly, or just difficult? “It probably, uh, didn’t help that you were up in the middle of the night.”

You flinch as soon as the words are out of your mouth. God, you’re stupid, but sometimes you cross into outright idiotic territory. This isn’t meant to be a fight, it’s talking, because talking is healthy and good, not /fighting/ because that gets you a black eye and a shouting Tim.

However, the expected fist doesn’t suddenly fly towards your face, you dare to peek back out and find that Tim is sitting up, holding his head in his hands and not looking at you, but at the floor instead. His shoulders heave with a heavy exhale, taking their time in letting it go.

“I was hoping I’d imagined you waking up.”

“No. I would’ve done something then,” you lie while knowing quite well that you were glued in place, too frightened to disturb the private moment. “But Alex was asleep, and...”

“Yeah,” Tim acknowledges with a careless wave. He sits up straight, hands going to his knees. The wall across from him would’ve shuddered in fear of his hard stare if it were sentient. “It’s not something I’ve really felt like talking about with either of you-- especially not Alex. That’s asking for trouble.”

You nod with understanding. There’s some things that you yourself just can’t talk to Alex about.

The faint crack of a gunshot at the back of your mind-- and you shake your head of it quick as you can. Going to Tim’s side, you distract yourself with the warmth of the summer radiating off of him in waves. It makes you think of the safe heat between him and Alex back in bed, and you’re okay again.

“Was this a one-off thing?”

Tim takes his time answering, opening his mouth one second and shutting it a second later to shake his head. He scratches at the back of his head, setting it stand on end.

"No. I've gone hacking into your channel once or twice in the when no one else was home. Just to watch videos with him."

The cracking shame in his voice is too much for you to handle. You touch his wrist and feel his anxious pulse fighting to slow down. There's many things you could be saying to him but none of them could possibly be enough to soothe him. So you stay silent.

"It's all that's left of him to look at," he continues with a tremble that you feel through his arm. He flexes his hands constantly, squeezing his fingers into a fist, releasing it, back and forth. "And it's the only place I might find any answers about him, especially with how fucked up my memories of him have gotten."

"You're not going to find anything more out by rewatching everything," you gently remind him. You'd know. You've scanned through them, went through every entry with a fine toothed comb then went back for seconds.

There's nothing left.

"I know," he spits bitterly. "But I guess I can't get that through my thick skull, huh?"

Your arms instinctually start to wind around his neck, though you stop halfway there to catch his gaze for permission. He shrugs, allowing you to hang on tight and press your cheek to his cleanly shaved face.

"You're not an idiot, Tim. You're... you're grieving," you manage after a moment of thought. "You didn't get much time to after what happened, uh, happened."

He makes a soft noise that could mean anything. You squeeze him, daring to brush your lips to his cheek. 

"...would it help knowing that I don't think he died as whatever it was he'd turned into?" you try weakly. "I was there too, remember? I remember him dying for you. For us, even."

He nods. You're not sure if he's nodding to recalling you there with him, or if what you said does in fact make him feel better.

(It's difficult, peeling back the fear and trauma enough to be able to see those final moments with Brian and Jessica. Your throat still aches remembering the way you screamed for them and for the man that hung onto your body like it might slip away from him again.)

(That thing tried to touch you again, though, tried to take you by the throat, and your brain immediately shut down. Brian's face is there in the memory, with blood exploding from his lips and his gut--)

You shake your head again and kiss the corner of Tim's mouth.

"What do you need to do?" you ask him quietly. "So you don't keep dwelling on this and hurting yourself with it?"

He's painfully silent at first. His fingers drift across your arm, stroking up and down. They wrap around tight at one point-- (tight like the way he held you as he ran from the room where you died, blood fresh on his sneakers)-- and he turns his head, looking at you with shiny child-like eyes.

He could have asked you to do anything then, and you would have done it.

"We need to go back to the school. Just one more time."

\--

There’s no question of it: you’ll do it, you’ll bring him there yourself and you’ll let him do whatever it is he needs to do to cleanse himself of this poisonous parasite that sucks the hours of sleep and rest he desperately needs.

That doesn’t mean you’re mentally prepared to revisit the place of your death.

Almost-death.

(It doesn’t matter. You know you touched death. You felt the chill crawl over your swiftly emptying veins and seep into your heart, seizing it and stilling it completely. If Jessica had not grabbed hold of you and held on while kicking and screaming to the high powers that you weren’t going anywhere--)

(Well, you wouldn’t be here now, sitting at the wheel of Tim’s car and hanging onto it with the world’s clammiest hands.)

“You’re sure you want to do this?” you ask Tim for possibly the billionth time. It’s not that you want him to tell you to turn the car around, but you wouldn’t necessarily say no to him requesting such a thing either.

He sits in the driver’s side with crossed arms and a thin lipped mouth, silent as he was the moment you two took off from the Kralie household. 

“No, but it’d be stupid to head back now.”

His stiff answer lies heavy in your brain. You want to ask him what he’s going to do at the school, but his pensive frown and furrowed brow is answer enough to you; even he doesn’t know for sure. Perhaps he expects to find a body, or maybe some hint of a struggle, something to cement that nightmarish evening in his mind as concrete and real.

(There isn’t going to be anything left for him, though, nothing he can physically touch or pick up with his strong shaking hands. There was nothing after you were taken. Blood, yes, the blood was left behind, and you think it may still be there, but the last thing Tim is going to want to see is the blood of his best friend staining the dusty floor.)

Still, if only he’d ask to go back to the house. Not that you want him to ask such a thing. But it would be easier, more preferable. There are always other days, other times you could do this.

Or maybe you could skive this off forever, and it would fade into the back of Tim’s mind, never to be actively thought of again. A passing idea, a ‘I want to do this but I don’t know if I can’ sort of thing with his work situation. 

Again, not that you want that for him, because this could be very important to him.

But fucking god, you have to admit, it would be so much easier on you. 

You said you’d bring him because when he asked you to, you would have done /anything/ for him. He could have asked for you to jump off the roof and you would’ve considered it, albeit confused as to how it would help him in the grieving process. 

Now that you’re doing it though, now that you’re traveling this achingly familiar path with its still dead trees and its empty roads, you’re wishing he had asked for anything else. Your body trembles, like it knows it’s going back to its gravesite. You’re two seconds from begging him to go back and have Alex do this, /Alex/, who thinks you’re going to Tim’s workplace to make sure everything is in place for him to start working next week. 

But you couldn’t do that to Tim. You couldn’t do that to Alex. It’s too much to ask, forcing that much tension upon their already strained relationship.

So instead you’re forcing your foot to the gas pedal and you’re ignoring the thrumming in your veins, igniting the fight-or-flight instinct within you and making it /so fucking tempting/ to rip the door open and run all the way back home. You’re pretending you’re okay, you’re reigning it in and you’re letting Tim think it’s all alright, that--

“Thank you.”

\-- what?

“Uh,” you force out, not for lack of words but because you might throw up if you let yourself actually speak.

“You didn’t have to do this... you shouldn’t have to,” Tim amends, failing to tear his eyes away from the woodsy view outside his window. “But I wanted you there with me.”

You barely glance away from the pothole-ridden road. 

“...why me?” you manage. You want to tell him it’s okay, that you understand.

You do understand but nothing could be less okay with you. You don’t want to lie to him about that.

“Well, for one, because I love you for some reason and that’s kinda important here,” Tim says almost begrudgingly. You have to cling to the steering wheel to keep from veering off into the wrong lane. “And because you’re the only one who’s gonna understand.”

(A bitter thought passes through your head: You’re the only one he has. He should have been able to choose someone better. Like Brian.)

(You scrub the thought from your mind. This isn’t the time.)

“Well,” you mutter, buying yourself time to think of the right response. Nothing is coming to you, and you think that perhaps there aren’t any words that can suit the situation. After a moment, you let yourself take in a huge breath and blow it all out in a sigh that leaves you a bit woozy. “Y’know I love you too. If I didn’t, I would’ve told you to fuck off, probably.”

Tim makes a strange grunting noise that could pass for a laugh in another universe. He suddenly sits up afterward, and you see why almost immediately. Grey blocks rise up from the horizon, coming together to make up the skeleton of a building that was once warm and inviting. 

Your heart is in your throat, and you don’t know if you’re ever going to get it back down.

A single glance at Tim is enough to tell you he’s feeling the very same way.

\--

Glass lays at your feet, littering the ground and crunching beneath your shoes. You stare, unable to tear your eyes away, wondering how anybody could dare to go near this place after what has happened here, after all the talk of ghosts and drugs and blood staining the walls. 

Somebody did this, though. Somebody came up to this door, and they brought a fist, a rock, /something/ slamming through the glass and sent it flying through the air. The shards that are left behind do not imply that anybody got hurt, without any red dotting the ground or decorating the edges of the pieces.

You can’t figure out why that’s such a strange thought, that this destructive person might be okay after what they did.

Maybe you can’t detach from the thought that nobody leaves this school without a heavier heart, or no heartbeat to speak of.

“Jay.”

The gentle call of your name tears you from your trance. Lifting your head, you see Tim at your side, looking not at the destruction but at you. His throat bobs with a nervous swallow, and he reaches out to take your elbow. He’s warm, warmer than you.

“You don’t have to go in.”

Your head goes light with relief, though you don’t let yourself enjoy it for long. You gently shrug off his arm and fix your stare ahead. The shadows awaiting you from within the entrance hall shudder.

“I don’t have to, but I’m going to,” you insist, reaching for the door handle and giving it a tug. It comes open easily, sweeping aside the glass that rests before it. “It wouldn’t be right making you go in alone.”

Tim’s gaze flits to the open door. He opens his mouth, though he can’t seem to find the words he wants. Taking that first step inside, he hesitates, squinting through the darkness. Sunlight may be bearing strong down upon the back of your head, but it can’t quite reach inside. 

Soon the heat clinging to the back of your neck fades away. A drafty breeze takes its place, drifting through the cracks of the building, whistling in your ear and seeping into your skin. 

Your breath rattles loud in your skull, but your feet hitting the steps are even louder, too loud. You squeeze your eyes shut, trying to chase the resulting ache from your head. Black dots flicker in front of your vision when you open your eyes again. The stairwell is ten times as treacherous this way, with loose areas and broken bottles lying in your way, and you feel the world give out from beneath you--

“Got you.”

A hand on the nape of your neck, another one pressed square upon your chest, and you’re upright again. Tim steers you, holding you against his side. The path he takes you on still stands out in your memory. You thought you’d blocked it out-- even in your nightmares it was nothing more than a floating black hole that you /knew/ was the school.

But it’s coming back to you fast, with graffiti scratched into the crumbling walls and broken legged desks that bump into your shin and leave bruises that will blacken up and sting when you press upon them. The blood pumping away in your head sounds like the violent flow of a river and if you look away from your feet long enough, you almost believe that water is trickling past your ankles. It rises, higher and higher, threatening to sweep you away and swallow the entire school once again.

Then you look down again, and you’re safe.

At least, you’re safe until you realize what hallway you’re standing in.

“Don’t look back,” Tim orders. He knows, you don’t know how he does but you don’t care, you obey and let the hand on the back of your hand guide you along. He strokes the back of your neck with the callused pads of his fingers, soothing, distracting. 

(He can’t be taking this well either. The memories must be licking at the back of his mind, trying to dig its claws in and wrench him open until he’s ripping at the seams.)

(But he focuses on you, keeps his eyes on you and drives you through this place like it’s nothing at all. You want to thank him for it.)

(It wouldn’t be enough.)

His free hand reaches out and presses to a door that is cracked open, the doorknob laying useless upon the ground along with the screws that once held it in place. And, there--

There, you bled out there, shook and tried to hold back the tears as you held a trembling hand to your wound, and you instinctively clap a hand to your side as though the nearly year old scarring might open back up and let your guts spill out. Your body will crumple right here and you’ll die again, you’re dying right now, you can’t breathe or think or speak or /anything/ that might indicate you’re anywhere near being alive.

You close your eyes and burrow into Tim’s neck. He lets you, and he holds you to his side. 

He doesn’t ask what ails you. You couldn’t be more grateful for that.

“There’s nothing here.”

It’s true; the few seconds you could bear looking at the room showed that there wasn’t even a single spilled drop of blood. 

In the time you’ve been away from this place, the ceiling started to collapse upon itself, chunks of it lying upon the floor and giving way to the sunlight outside. Somebody must have come poking around in here and, for a reason you will /never/ comprehend, thought it would be a good spot to down all their beer and leave the bottles behind in the corner. The intruding light glitters against the brown glass, bidding it to shine, jewel-like.

Otherwise, the room is unchanged, except for the blood.

(Your blood? Brian’s blood? It was here, once, you saw it, felt it, it was /here/.)

“Nothing’s here,” Tim says again, his hand going loose against your neck. You clench a fist around his shirt, refusing to lose that connection to him. It’s your only anchor here. Burying your nose in his neck, you breathe in deep, filling your senses, keeping yourself there, you’re there with him, you’re okay.

You run your fingers over the scar through your shirt. 

Everything is okay.

“I-- nothing’s here, and, and I knew there wouldn’t be,” Tim murmurs to the floor. “But I’m still disappointed. What the fuck is the logic in that?”

“None,” you breathe out into his heated skin. You get it, he told himself he wouldn’t find anything to save himself the heartache, but then his brain tricked itself into thinking maybe he’s being pessimistic about this. A tiny sliver of hope settled in, and it grew without his permission.

You get it, you do, because you’ve done it a thousand times before.

There isn’t going to be any clues. But there could be.

Jessica isn’t alive. But she could be.

Alex is long gone. But he might still be there, somewhere.

You just have to try hard enough.

(There isn’t enough trying in the world that could’ve changed any of that.)

“Goddammit.”

Tim slips away from you, stomping a heavy foot against the ground and cracking a thin piece of rubble into dust. He shuffles from corner to corner of the tiny room, searching, and coming up fruitless in the end. His fist comes up against the closest wall, hitting hard enough that you look up, expecting dust to shake from the ceiling.

“Y’know what’s even shittier? I don’t /want/ to find anything,” he growls, straightening up and running his hands through his hair. He breathes hard through his nose, eyes tightly shut. “If I did, god knows what I’d-- what do I even want anymore?!”

You are silent. As much as you’ve come to know Tim, you can’t begin to imagine what he might actually want here. Closure, proof that it all ever happened, something to say goodbye to? But with that comes the turmoil of realizing how very /gone/ Brian is, how very dead he is, and you don’t know if he can handle that. 

Hands clenching at his sides, Tim takes in a deep breath, and turns his eyes to the decrepit ceiling. He’s quiet as he moves, feet barely making a sound. 

“...give me a moment,” he asks of you. “I don’t know-- I just need to talk to him. “

“Of course,” you say without hesitance. 

(You don’t question him. You’ve spoken to Jessica before, in your dreams, in the waking hours when you still see her puzzled face upon the backs of your eyelids.)

(It helps. Sometimes.)

Tim stands in the middle of the room, head bowing, as though he may be praying. 

(You know he isn't. He told you once, a long time ago, when the car windows were rolled down and the last of the autumn winds were blowing through your messy hair.) 

(The car roared past a church, with tall dark bricked peaks and stain glass windows. A procession of well-dressed individuals trailed out from the open double doors, chattering of a service that obviously had gone well.) 

("Think mom brought me there when I was little," Tim said as the wheels squeaked to a stop at a red light. He frowned at the group of small children clinging to the legs of their parents, wearing outfits that were both itchy looking and far too mature for their little bodies. "She thought it would help me, if I thought about God more, distracting me and all.") 

(You don't need to ask if it helped. The scowl on his face is answer enough.) 

His eyes aren't closed. He's still looking at the rubble covered floor, eyes flicking back and forth. There is nothing to see here, no matter how hard the pair of you might search, but you aren't going to tell him that. He needs to see for himself, to prove it. 

Whatever it takes. 

You see him moving his lips, rapidly murmuring to himself. At first, you don't think he's actually talking, but if you let yourself step past the room's threshold, you find you can hear him. 

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." 

For what? For pulling Brian into a situation neither of them had any control over? For failing to save him when he had chosen to die for the both of you? 

It's not your place to ask. 

You lower your head as well, your chin coming down to your chest. All you think of is Brian-- not the hooded man that took him by the neck and strangled him of his identity, but the Brian you knew. 

Brian. The man who smiled constantly, at anyone and everyone and laughed at the worst of jokes. The one that put everything he had into a character far too small to contain somebody like him. 

The person-- the very first person to reach for Tim and get him to reach back. 

Tim lets out a shuddering breath, breaking you of your trance. Lifting your eyes to take in his face, you see his eyes going red and glossy. He sniffles, hands curling into quaking fists at his sides. 

"Alright," he utters. He swats his bangs from his eyes, walking to you and pausing at your side. "Let's go."

You catch him by the wrist before he can take another step. His pulse jumps beneath your touch. You imagine yours is just as erratic. 

"He wanted you to live. Me too. I... I felt it," you tell him. 

You couldn't figure out all of what Brian and Jessica were thinking. But they did this for you two. They saw how much he needed you, and they saw the unfairness in letting the faceless creature devour you when you wanted answers and to help and nothing more. 

They saw they couldn't save themselves. But they knew they could save both of you. 

Tim gazes at you with tears streaking down his stubbled cheeks. Once, you were afraid to touch him at times like this. But you've learned that he needs you to, learned to take his face in your hands and run your thumbs across his handsome face, his agonized and still so very handsome face. He closes his eyes, exhaling long and heavy through his nose. His very body seems to deflate beneath your touch.

He's so small, so delicate, fragile as you were as he ran you from this very building with your blood dripping to the ground. 

His lips come down and meet yours. Salt streams onto your tongue, and you kiss back. 

When he parts from you, he doesn't immediately yank away. Instead, he lets your hands trail from his face and down his chest. Turning away, he starts to make his way down the hall, stopping when he sees you aren't following along. 

"Coming?" he asks with a puzzled frown. You nod, waving him off. 

"I need a couple more minutes, go wait in the car." And so he does. Any other time, he would have likely stayed to keep an eye on you. 

But you suspect he needs a couple minutes to himself. You can give him that. 

Your footsteps are louder than you expect, nearly startling you from your skin. A frantic pulse thrums through your exhausted veins, though you move as though you have all the time in the world. With what Brian gave you, what Jessica gave you, you /do/ in fact have all the time in the world.

Eyes to the crumbling ceiling, you blink slowly, willing the universe to give you a sign that they're still here and listening. 

"Thank you," you whisper to them. "Thank you for everything." 

You don't feel any different. Maybe someday you will. But this isn't for you or the sake of your heavy shoulders. It's for them. 

The eerie silence isn't so eerie now. If anything, it's peaceful, wanted-- on the other hand, the abrupt twittering from your phone, is not. 

Recovering from the sudden kick to the brain, you reach into your jeans pocket and pull out your phone. A text from Alex waits there for you. 

'coming in behind you. didn't want to scare you.' 

You stare at the glowing screen, unmoving, not even twitching when the phone falls back asleep. 

(Alex does this all the time back home. To be honest you think it's unnecessary and a bit hilarious, being treated like the world's most nervous cat.) 

(Still, it's helpful when you're particularly jumpy in the morning after a barrage of nightmares, fleeing from the bang of a gunshot.) 

(But for him to be doing it here, that doesn't make sense, unless he...)

“Behind you.”

You whirl around, phone held protectively to your heart. Indeed, there he is, standing with his phone out as well, and... you don’t rear back. The anxious jerk of your heart is expected, but the calm that drifts over you is not. Surely, seeing him here, /him/, the one who turned this place into the haunted house of memories you wish you could drown away, it would draw out something you’ve been running from ever since you awoke upon a couch covered in plastic with a bloody shirt and fresh stitches in your flesh.

But nothing comes shivering up your spine. 

Alex drops the phone into his jacket pockets, eyes cast to the ground. He closes the distance between you two, taking slow steps past the threshold. You hear every movement so very acutely; the rustle of the too large jacket that more than likely belonged to his father, broken rubble skidding under his feet, the soft thunk of his shoes.

“So,” he speaks up, clearing his throat. You avoid his gaze, just as he’s avoiding yours. “Why did you two come out here? After lying to me? Y’know, that thing we all decided we wouldn’t do anymore to one another?”

Color floods your neck and ears. The stones between your feet are suddenly amazingly interesting to you.

“That wasn’t my idea, if that means anything to you.”

“It does, it means I’m going to slap Tim up the back of his head.”

“...please don’t,” you beg of him. You swallow the sharp lump forming in your throat, scraping your lungs. “We didn’t know what to tell you.”

“The truth is a good place to start,” Alex says. You finally bring yourself to look him in the eye, and again, your heart jerks, but you aren’t afraid.

He’s right. But--

“This was about Tim and him making peace with Brian,” Jay tells him, taking Alex by the arm. It’s easy to feel the tension in his muscles even through two layers of clothing. “Brian... wasn’t dead after what happened in the video, where you two were filming together. Not yet.”

“I know,” he says, voice stiffening. “I saw him without the mask, remember? And Tim told me what happened to him, what the... the thing did.”

You nearly release his arm, taken aback. 

“Tim told you?”

“It wasn’t entirely his idea to, but, yeah, he did,” Alex explains with a weak shrug. He covers the hand you have on his arm with his own, pressing enough that you find you can’t let go-- so you don’t. “Do I wanna know what this place has got to do with him?”

He obviously doesn’t, the tension in his body growing tighter with each passing second. But if he wants the truth, you don’t really have any choice.

“This is where it happened. He led Tim here to find me, keeping me from bleeding out, and when they were both here--”

(Her face flashes through your mind. The sharpness in your throat is enough to cut flesh.)

(You can’t tell him about her. Not yet. Too much.)

“The thing showed up and attacked us, but, Brian managed to hold it off so Tim could get out with me, and maybe even... well,” you hesitate. ‘Kill’ doesn’t seem to be the right word, not when the creature was hardly real enough to be considered ‘alive’ in the first place. “None of us have seen it since then. I don’t know if he destroyed it but that’s pretty good evidence, I’d think, that it’s gone.”

“You can figure out what happened to Brian when he did that, though,” you finish. The sharp thing in your throat aches worse than ever now, and you have to wipe your eyes before you can look Alex in the eye again.

All hints of anger in his face are gone and replaced by something else, with big eyes and raised eyebrows. You would say he was impressed, if it weren’t for the guilt weighing his shoulders down.

“...figures,” Alex says, clearing his throat. He kicks at a stone that lays in his foot’s path, going to your side. “It would be him, wouldn’t it? The buff guy who always takes one for the team.”

You stare at Alex, lip between your teeth. He shakes his head and wraps an arm around your waist, eyes going to the slowly reddening sun.

“It’s why I cast him in Marble Hornets, not just because he was the only guy to show up to the auditions,” Alex admits with an air of forced coolness. “I’d already decided he was gonna be in the movie because he was such an awesome guy. The auditions were only formality when it came to his part.”

“Huh,” you murmur under your breath. You never forgot that Brian was Alex’s friend too; but it’s not something that’s ever been at the front of your mind. Brian was always Tim’s, not Alex’s. When you thought of Brian, Tim came to mind too. That’s just how it was.

Knowing that this is digging into Alex as well and leaving another set of scars, it makes you ache, regardless of how involved he might’ve been in what happened to Brian. It’s not fair to blame Alex in the first place anyway.

You place a hand over his heart. His eyes fall from the revealed sky to your face, and for a moment, the light hits him just right, letting you see the damp shine in his stare.

He hides it away seconds later, resting his chin on your head and the hand on your hip coming up to your nape. You settle into him, taking in the heat that he brought from outside. The cold press of his lips to your forehead contrasts it, enough to make you shiver.

“...I should go,” you say with a sigh, remembering Tim back in the car. Alex obligingly parts from you, all of the tenderness gone from his face. Sure enough, he’s back to his usual sneering self. 

“I won’t ask to come back in the car, can’t imagine Timmy would be too happy about it.”

You smile apologetically and shrug, though the moment he begins to go down the hall, it hits you that you’ve no idea how he got here so soon after you and Tim did.

“Wait!”

He pauses, turning his head. 

“How’d you even get here?” you ask, voice echoing down the hall. You don’t need to be near him to see the smirk playing on his lips.

"When you're homeless and crazy, you tend to find a lot of underground paths and shit."

With that, he takes a turn into a classroom off to the left, something far off clunks, and he’s gone--and for the first time ever, you’re completely alone in this building. 

No drifting spirits. No gunmen walking the halls with ill intents and a broken mind. No masked men, chasing each other down and falling from bannisters. No faceless monsters reaching to take you by the blood-soaked throat. 

Just you. 

You look to the ceiling one last time. 

The sun is gone, and clouds are rolling in to take over the night, heavy with a storm that will bring you to sleep on the way home, and Tim will carry you into the house, Christina waiting to tease him about how much he cares. Alex will be waiting up in the bedroom, likely playing dumb, asking how it was over at the shelter. You’ll wake up an hour later to the smell of cooling dinner at your side, likely cooked by Tim seeing as Christina is still learning to cook without the help of her ex-husband. You might share with Alex, knowing he’s having trouble remembering he has human needs.

Life will go on. Normal. Safe. All because of what happened in the room you’re standing in. Because of two people who had every reason to leave you in your blood to die.

But they didn’t. And you’ll never stop thanking them.

The wind begins to howl after you as you walk down the hall, calmer than you were when you first traveled it.

It almost sounds like a voice.


End file.
